


and dull I see are your senseless eyes

by mr-finch (soubriquet)



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Blood, Dubious Consent, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-28
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-15 05:12:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/pseuds/mr-finch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harold doesn’t like getting messy and he practically asks for it, the poor thing. Musing on <a href="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb1i91qAej1r9bnf6o1_1280.jpg">this</a> photo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and dull I see are your senseless eyes

Harold doesn’t like getting messy and he practically asks for it, the poor thing. With that spiny hair (now dull and unbristled), that expensive skincare (here dripping red, now unshaven), and his near-obsessive penchant for suits (rumpled, creased, but kept the most, just in case she needs another layer to break through and keep him guessing). With all that, it’s barely anything at all to crouch down before his four-legged tomb and advise him _not to do that again, escape isn’t possible for you, and didn’t you know that already, Harry?_

Her lower lip itches as she talks, so when she’s done she licks it and watches him cringe. It’s Denton’s blood - not all of it, most of it’s hers, but he had seen her face, so what else could she do? That’s the story she pitches to Harold, lets it roll off her tongue as if it were a truth she believed. That’s the way they tell lies, her, and him, and sometimes even a rat like Weeks if he’s intelligent enough.

That’s how you tell a lie: you choose to live consciously and relate truths hidden around the edges. You exist deliberately, for a purpose, and you finish the job, so that after you’re done, no one can alter it. They both know. They’re so very similar, Harry and her.

Root’s hand isn’t bloody, but it unsettles Harold all the same as it settles on the back of his chair, thumb dipping down just to touch his neck where it can reach. He tries his best to pull away, but with his arms tied to the chair and his back in that oh so damnable mess he got himself into, he just can’t.

When she stops speaking to him of what she did to Denton, of what he _told_ her, she digs her fingers deep into the chair and uncurls upward. Harry can’t choose between meeting her eyes and the splatter of red beneath her nose and over her cheeks. She decides to give him a better view, leaning forward - _Yes,_ Harold, you did ask - and in the last inch or so, parting her mouth and claiming his lips with her own. 

He tastes softer than she does, grizzled and metallic with fear - although that could be an echo of her own here, washed-red into his mouth, and when he forces it closed, the knife blade at his throat opens him again, with a little gasp of air. 

“Harold,” Root says, as she draws back and takes his glasses with one hand. “You need to know, what it would be like to live as freely as me. No qualms. No rats running their little races around you. Trying to save you.”

He looks so different with blood smeared in a palette of morbid colors across his face. His lips are the worst: painted a thin wet red, and more is crisscrossed over his cheeks, just like Root. 

It doesn’t have the bite of a fresh moment, the thrill of adrenalized panic that manifests as fight, and a weakness that manifests as platelets trying despairingly to heal a wound. But it at least has the effect of making Harold Finch look a little more… real.

“Lucky for you, I have everything you need right here.”


End file.
